New Englanders dig out from Nor'easter storm while more floods threaten California

Remnants of a powerful Nor'easter blizzard spun north into Canada on Wednesday after burying parts of New England and New York under as much as 3 feet of snow, while California girded for more flooding in the wake of the latest atmospheric river storm.

Remnants of a powerful Nor'easter blizzard spun north into Canada on Wednesday after burying parts of New England and New York under as much as 3 feet of snow, while California girded for more flooding in the wake of the latest atmospheric river storm. In the Northeast, the late-winter blizzard dumped about 2 feet (60 cm) of snow in the Berkshire mountains of western Massachusetts and northwestern Connecticut, and a foot or more in parts of New York's Hudson Valley.

Across Massachusetts the accumulations left by the Nor'easter - a type of storm that affects the U.S. East Coast and is named after the direction of the wind - varied greatly. In Colrain in the northwestern part of the state near the Vermont border, 36 inches (91 cm) of snow was on the ground, while Boston's suburbs had about an inch. Colrain town administrator Kevin Fox said he had no electricity or cell service at his home and had gone to his office, even though town hall was closed, so that he could call his mother.

"I have no idea who has power or who doesn't," he said. About 153,000 homes and businesses in New York and New England were still without power as of Wednesday morning, according to PowerOutage.com, a tracking service. About 284,000 customers were in the dark on Tuesday.

Colrain, with 1,700 residents, has only five snow plows and Fox was uncertain how long it would take to dig out. In western Vermont around Burlington, about 200 miles (320 km) northwest of Boston, 24 inches of snow piled up in some locations since early Tuesday, according to National Weather Service (NWS) meteorologist Marvin Boyd, who saw six inches at his house fall in two hours.

But he said heavy snow was not unusual in Vermont. He had to shovel out and drive his children to school Wednesday morning before work. "We're used to this," Boyd said. 'A LITTLE BIT UNPREDICTABLE'

In California, where the ground is saturated after weeks of unusually heavy rain, residents were bracing for yet another storm. That storm is now brewing in the Pacific Ocean and could hit next Monday or Tuesday, bringing more flooding, said Marc Chenard, a forecaster with the NWS Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland.

"It's a little too soon to say for sure if it's another atmospheric river, but the storm is coming," he said. A spate of atmospheric river storms - the term used by meteorologists to describe airborne currents of dense, tropical moisture from the Pacific - lashed California in rapid succession from late December through mid-January, leading to the deaths of at least 20 people.

Another churned through the state this week, bringing more heavy rain along the coast and lower inland areas and triggering renewed flooding from swollen rivers and streams. The rains, capping four years of prolonged drought, heat waves and heightened wildfire activity, are a reminder of weather extremes California and other parts of the U.S. now face in an era of human-induced climate change, experts say.

Monterey County reissued evacuation orders for its southern Salinas River communities. A southward shift in the weather sent heavy rain into the mountains on Tuesday, and it could take a couple of days for the water to reach the river, said county spokesman Nicholas Pasculli. "We are expecting some rises in the Salinas River Thursday into Friday, maybe Saturday," Pasculli said. "Right now it's a little bit unpredictable."

As much as 3 feet of fresh snow accumulated in high-mountain elevations where snowdrifts already reach rooftops, according to the NWS. Last week, levees failed along the Pajaro River in Monterey County, flooding entire communities made up predominantly of migrant farm workers. Pasculli said the levee breach had been temporarily plugged but repair work was ongoing.

 

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)